Recent calcite formations on blocks that have fallen from the ceiling. The gallery’s name was inspired by their unusual form.
The Conservation of Decorated Caves
Geneviève Pinçon and Marie-Blanche Potte
WHAT IS PREHISTORIC ART?
IN THE HEART OF CHAUVET CAVE
74 Establishing a Chronology and Dating the Art Hélène Valladas
77 A Tour of the Cave
80 The Prehistoric Entrance and its Evolution Over Time Jean-Jacques Delannoy
84 Near the Prehistoric Entrance, Before the Sill
84 The Brunel Chamber
94 The Chamber of the Bear Hollows and the Cactus Gallery
106 The Red Panels Gallery
112 In the Deep Chambers and Galleries
112 The Hillaire Chamber
132 The Skull Chamber
139 The Megaloceros Gallery
145 The End Chamber
159 The Sacristy Gallery
164 Understanding the Art of Chauvet Cave
166 From Floors to Ceilings. 3D Contributions to Research Thomas Sagory
170 The Bestiary of Chauvet Cave
177 From the Materials to the Artistic Gesture
177 White Drawings
179 Red Drawings
183 Black Drawings
188 From Artistic Gesture to Interpretation
192 The Panel of the Lions: a History/Story, a Myth
Conclusion
194 Chauvet Cave, Humanity’s First Art
196 A Chronological Approach to Art that Must Change
198 A Different Vision of Our Relationships with the Animal World
200 Chauvet 2: Between Research and Public Engagement Gilles Tosello and Valérie Moles
Annexes
206 Bibliography
FOREWORD
The Ardèche region is home to one of the finest examples of cave art known to date, the Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc cave, whose oldest representations date back 36,000 years.
Its discovery in 1994 was a major event, revolutionizing our knowledge of cave art and Paleolithic societies.
This magnificent, decorated cave, which has come down to us in an extraordinary state of preservation, is fragile and, therefore, cannot be opened to the public. A replica, called “Grotte Chauvet 2-Ardèche,” was opened to the public in 2015 and has already welcomed over three million visitors.
Since June 22, 2014, this site has also enjoyed international recognition thanks to UNESCO’s inclusion of Chauvet Cave on the World Heritage List.
Nearly thirty years have passed since the discovery of the original cave by Éliette Brunel, Jean-Marie Chauvet, and Christian Hillaire on December 18, 1994. Numerous research sessions have been carried out by multidisciplinary scientific teams, led successively by Jean Clottes, Jean-Michel Geneste, and now Carole Fritz.
The work carried out by these researchers has led to considerable advances in our understanding of the cave, its context, the artworks, and their creators. This work also enabled the creation of the Chauvet 2-Ardèche interpretive center, including a scale replica of certain parts of the original cave and an exhibition space. Researchers, curators, and educators work together to preserve and promote this vestige of our distant past.
The Syndicat mixte de l’espace de restitution de la grotte Chauvet (SMERGC), created on the initiative of the Ardèche department and the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, is therefore delighted to contribute to the production of this superb book, the culmination of almost thirty years of research, which gives the general public access to the most advanced state of scientific knowledge.
Isabelle Massebeuf, president of the Syndicat mixte de l’espace de restitution de la grotte Chauvet, regional councilor for Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes
2 Bison and a horse (in the background)
Chamber
THE CONSERVATION OF DECORATED CAVES
Geneviève Pinçon and Marie-Blanche Potte
New decorated caves are discovered every year. Forgotten and naturally preserved for millennia, they come to light in different contexts, often by chance. Most of the discoveries are made by speleologists while they are prospecting and exploring. This was the case for Chauvet Cave. However, caves are also occasionally discovered during construction work, as was the case for the recently discovered Licorne Cave in Charente. Preserved and hidden from view, these underground sites evolved over time, and their accessibility is rarely the same as it was during the Paleolithic period. Climatic conditions affect the natural environment and can cause cave entrances and rock shelters to collapse or make them invisible due to heavy sedimentary infill. The subterranean landscape of caves also changes, but many cave floors and walls remain intact, much to the delight of speleologists, archaeologists, anthropologists, paleontologists, geologists, sedimentologists, and others. Even today, with just the right lighting or the presence of a few previously unnoticed clues, graphic forms of expression are discovered in prehistoric occupation sites that have already been known and studied for several decades, such as at Gourdan (Haute-Garonne).
National Government Policy
Today, new discoveries are subject to a thorough process validated by a community of experts, notably within the framework of national and inter-regional commissions, to guarantee their integrity while ensuring their knowledge. As a result, the work of archaeologists in decorated caves is now essentially based on observation, often from a distance in order to preserve the ground. Only a few material samples or test pits may be authorized to gain a better understanding of the site, and these interventions are strictly monitored to preserve the site for future generations, who will, in turn, develop other noninvasive means of investigation. Since the discovery of Bruniquel Cave (Tarn-et-Garonne) in 1990, an awareness of the need to protect these sites from the moment they are discovered now enables specialists to record and report the wealth of information preserved in caves through time. Formed by natural phenomena such as seismic or hydrogeological events, caves can preserve traces of animal activities, such as bear polish and hibernation hollows, and the remains of human activities, such as hearths, discarded artifacts, and of course their symbolic expressions. These decorated caves thus open our eyes to an entire geological, animal, and human history that must be protected for future generations.
To preserve these fragile sites that are often difficult to access, the French Ministry of Culture supports a national policy to encourage their protection and study through 3D digital archiving (see p. 86–87). These resources provide a better understanding of how these places were used (digital simulations of human movements according to site morphology, for example) and ensure the least invasive scientific studies possible. This digital technology can also be used to produce replicas for the public—such as Lascaux IV, Cosquer-Méditerranée, and Chauvet 2—thus offering a host of possibilities for sharing this heritage.
Chauvet Cave is the first site for which the Ministry of Culture implemented a longterm conservation policy led by the DRAC and a monographic study by a multidisciplinary team since its discovery. This approach to a major national operation was also recently implemented for Cosquer Cave.
The Conservation of Chauvet Cave
The long-term preservation of this site was accidental. The collapse of the Chauvet Cave entrance 21,500 years ago created a stable environment traversed only by run-off water tempered by the heavy thickness of the rock—the cave is 40 meters below the vegetation cover— and by arthropods and only rodents that
might be able to slip through its crevices (see p. 80–83).
The discovery of the cave in 1994 made it imperative to reconcile our knowledge of the site and the extraordinary lessons it could teach us with the need to preserve this remarkable ensemble. The first conservation step was for the national government to acquire the land
on which the cave is located so that the resources—financial, human, and in terms of skills—could be made available at the highest level. This was followed by ensuring the protection of the cave with the most powerful legislative tools available, namely its classification as a historic monument, which provides the maximum authorization and protection for the property.
At the same time, and in light of what Lascaux and Altamira taught us about the extreme fragility of caves, immediately following the discovery it was decided to close the Chauvet Cave to all visitors who were not strictly motivated by the imperative of conservation or by the conducting of research concerned with conservation. The decision to produce
Protecting the cave floor: an example of the walkways in the cave
TIME FRAME
Prehistoric art is a worldwide phenomenon that exists on every continent (Eurasia, Australia, North and South America, Africa, Indonesia, etc.) from the earliest times to more recent periods.
The term “prehistory” refers to events concerning humankind before the invention of writing, which is generally considered to mark the beginning of History. Prehistory encompasses a very broad period, beginning with the first African hominins some 7 million years ago and ending approximately 5,300 years ago, which is the age of the first written documents discovered in Mesopotamia.
This vast chronology of prehistory includes the “Paleolithic” period. This term derives from the Greek palaiós, meaning “ancient,” and lithos, “stone.” Thus, the Paleolithic refers to the “Old Stone Age” that began when the oldest known stone tools were made 3.3 million years ago in Africa.
The Paleolithic thus spans the period from 3.3 million to 12,000 years ago—when the climate began to warm, leading to the end of the Ice Age, and humans began experimenting with agriculture and gradually abandoning the hunter-gatherer lifestyle. For convenience, the Paleolithic period is subdivided into four phases—Archaic, Lower, Middle, and Upper—which are not synchronous from one continent to another because the ability to make and use stone tools did not arise suddenly. Rather, this development took place very gradually, initially in Africa, in association with Australopithecines (Lomekwi 3, Kenya), and later with the first representatives of the human genus, Homo.
For our purposes, we will immerse ourselves in the Upper Paleolithic of the Eurasian continent. This period begins with the arrival of the first Homo sapiens from the African continent, passing through the Middle East and the Balkans, and ends with the last great Ice Age, spanning over forty thousand years (from 50,000 to 12,000 years ago). Traditionally, the Upper Paleolithic is subdivided into four “cultural” subgroups defined
by the presence or absence of certain forms of “knapped stone” tools (including various hard stone varieties, mostly flint) and “animal materials” (antler, bone, and ivory):
Aurignacian 45,000 to 30,000 BP (before the present)
Gravettian 30,000 to 22,000 BP
Solutrean 22,000 to 18,000 BP
Magdalenian 18,000 to 12,000 BP
When considering prehistoric thought (and therefore art) this subdivision is unsatisfactory, as such a cultural succession based on stone and bone tools is not synchronous with some of the thematic variations observed on cave walls.
In other words, although the invention of a new tool is often considered a marker of cultural change, this does not translate into a visible change in art. Indeed, while weapons and tools carry an intrinsically cultural dimension, it would be rather reductive to consider them as “emblems.” In prehistory, these cultures are entities defined at the beginning of the twentieth century by the first excavators, and they remain above all keywords accepted by the scientific community to enable researchers to talk a common language. In this book, we will occasionally speak of Aurignacian and Gravettian cultures, but more often of human groups who lived within a time interval, for example, such as between 38,000 and 28,000 years ago.
Previous double page
12 Palm-dots and animals Brunel Chamber
Right-hand page 13 Chronology of the main
cultures
from 45,000 to 30,000 BP from 30,000 to 22,000 BP from 22,000 to 18,000 BP from 18,000 to 12,000 BP
Aurignacian Gravettian
Solutrean Magdalenian
Hohlenstein-Stadel
Angles-sur-l’Anglin
Lascaux
Marsoulas
Grimaldi
Mas-d’Azil
Niaux
Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc
Gargas
sign in Cantabrian Spain as well (Cullalvera, El Pindal, Armintxe 29–30). This is yet another example of the cultural exchanges that took place between Pyreneans and Cantabrians during the Magdalenian period. Similarly, “tectiform” (roof-shaped) signs are mostly found in Périgord caves such as Font-de-Gaume, with the exception of one deciphered in the Marsoulas Cave (Haute-Garonne), confirming the existence of links between the Pyrenees and Aquitaine during a Magdalenian phase around 18,000 years ago. “Quadrilaterals” are another family of graphics that are widespread in several regions, with certain variants seemingly rooted in a local region consisting of a site and its surroundings.
Paleolithic signs thus belong to the same semiological system as the animals with which they share spatio-temporal variations. These invaluable elements help archaeologists reconstruct the fluctuations in cultural links between sometimes distant regions.
29 Three engraved claviform signs
Armintxe, Vizcaya, Spain Magdalenian (between 17,000 and 15,500 years old)
30 Claviform signs, bison, horse, and red dots
El Pindal, Asturias, Spain Magdalenian (probably around 17,000–15,500 years old)
The silty-clay floor surfaces preserve many traces of bear movements, which can be modeled from isolated footprints ( 52), footprint tracks or zones, and trampling. In the Chamber of the Bear Hollows, some bear tracks can be attributed to medium-sized bears heading toward the Brunel Chamber. A trail of smaller footprints resembles those of a young bear cub following its mother in a more disorderly fashion. While most of these tracks follow the wall, which served as a guide in the dark, some wander off in the direction of the Paleolithic porch, through which daylight likely filtered (see p. 80–83).
Finally, Chauvet Cave enables us to reconsider the role of the (cave) bear in the symbolic thinking of human groups: Researchers have currently recorded eight definite cave bear depictions on the cave walls (morphologically naturalistic and contextualized in gallery-dens), along with paleontological remains (bear skulls in the Hillaire Chamber and the scenography of the Skull Chamber) that are exceptional examples of bear anthropozoology. The appropriation of the bear world at the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic (occupation of galleries, transfer of markings on walls, ceremonial use of bear bones) appears in this cave with a rare intensity. Chauvet Cave can probably be seen as a model for the symbolic use of karst environments (many decorated caves are in an ursine context) and not as an exception linked to the extraordinary conservation and diversity of paleobiological and archaeological elements.
52 Cave bear paw print on a clay slope Hillaire Chamber
Left-hand page
51 Bear paw marks
Chamber of the Bear Hollows, Panther Panel
A cave bear wiped its paws on the panther’s head (brown marks).
A TOUR OF THE CAVE
The cave entrance used today is not one that was used during the Paleolithic period. The prehistoric entrance was obstructed by successive collapses of the summit cornice of the Cirque d’Estre. Abraham’s pillar is the only remaining evidence of this ancient cornice. The cave entrance porch was definitively sealed 21,500 years ago (see p. 81–83).
During our research sessions, we enter the cave through a diverticulum that was enlarged after the discovery to allow people to pass through. This passageway leads to the ceiling of one of the first chambers, the Brunel Chamber. A 10-meter shaft then leads down to the cave floor. In the early years, visitors and researchers descended with flexible caving ladders, but today the cave has been fitted out to ensure everyone’s safety ( 72). As we reach the bottom, an immense cave with impressive volumes surrounds us. Our gaze is captured by the large stalagmitic columns to our right and by a collapse (subsidence) on the ground to our left. Now we are underground, in the Brunel Chamber, and our senses awaken.
Oriented south-north, Chauvet Cave is made up of a series of large chambers, some of which are up to 50 meters wide and 20 meters high (Brunel Chamber, Chamber of the Bear Hollows, Hillaire Chamber, Skull Chamber), linked by smaller galleries (Red Panels, Megaloceros, and Candle galleries, see maps 1 and 2, p. 45 and 79).
In its longest straight line, the cave is nearly 250 m long and runs horizontally—a dimension that remains theoretical since, in reality, you must walk on constructed walkways that circumvent natural obstacles and, of course, archaeological
68 Mammoth Panel Sacristy Gallery
155 Horse with black outline and blending, enhanced with engraving Sacristy Gallery
The impression of vanishing perspective is due to the constraints of photographing in this location.
156 Graphic reproduction of the Sacristy horse
Created from the 3D model of the wall, this reproduction shows the horse in its actual proportions (see above).
157 Horse Sacristy Gallery
Only the head is visible in this photo taken from the end of the End Chamber walkway.
Black Drawings
According to our current knowledge, the black pigment consists exclusively of charcoal from a single coniferous species, Scots pine. The execution of the black figures reflects, above all, the state of mind of an artist that can be described as “opportunistic,” with a keen sense of adaptation to the wall conditions. The technical principles involved are simple, but their combination or succession could result in a complex chain of actions. The generic term “black figures” thus encompasses a wide variety of artworks.
Some of the figures are drawn directly onto hard limestone surfaces free of clay. The outline is sometimes corrected with the fingertips, which crushes the charcoal particles and increases the density of the black color. This is the first stage of stump-drawing ( 181–182).
The production process sometimes becomes more complicated when the wall is covered with a thin brown or ochre clay film, which is ideal for finger tracing, as we have seen above. Charcoal drawing, on the other hand, is difficult, if not impossible, in this case as the movement of the charcoal softens the clay, resulting in thicker smudged lines that are confusing and difficult to read. In these cases, the artists scraped the surface superficially to remove the thin layer of clay, revealing the underlying white limestone. This operation had the dual advantage of allowing the charcoal drawing to proceed normally, creating a white background that did not exist before. The black figures thus benefited from a contrast that enhances their legibility and expressive power.
Another consequence is that, once scraped, the more resistant white limestone beneath can be finely engraved with hard-pointed tools such as flint burins.
The artists often left patches of brown clay on the surface, spreading and mixing charcoal directly on the wall. The resulting colors range from light gray to beige or bistre (blackish brown), depending on the dominant black or brown.
181 Bison, horse, and megaloceros Megaloceros Gallery
